Mexico City, May 22, 2017--Mexican authorities must undertake every effort to secure the safe release of journalist Salvador Adame Pardo, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Gunmen abducted Adame, director of the television station 6TV, on May 18 from the central Mexican town of Nueva Italia.

Unidentified gunmen in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero on May 13, 2017, robbed seven journalists and threatened to kill them, according to press reports and other journalists who spoke with the victims.

By Alexandra Ellerbeck/Senior CPJ Americas and U.S. Research Associate

Earlier this week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly joked about Trump using a saber on the press and U.S. Senator Jim Risch told CNN the press should be questioning the Washington Post about its sources. Then, on May 16, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump allegedly asked former FBI director James Comey to consider putting journalists in prison for publishing classified information. If the request, which is allegedly detailed in a memo from Comey, is true it represents a serious risk to reporters, according to First Amendment attorneys.

Independent journalist Fabián García Castrejón fled the western Mexican state of Nayarit on May 15, 2017, after someone painted threats on the wall of his home, according to the journalist, officials, and media reports.

By Sara Rafsky/CPJ Guest Blogger

When Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas arrived in New York City in November 2011 to accept CPJ's International Press Freedom Award, he and his staff had already suffered a grenade attack on the offices of their weekly, Ríodoce. Weeks after receiving the award, they were the victims of a denial of service (DOS) attack that would take the publication's website offline for days. The death threats against Javier in reprisal for his reporting on organized crime and corruption continued until his brutal murder today in his home city of Culiacán, but he refused a life in exile or a life without journalism. "To die," he said in an interview with CPJ, "would be to stop writing."

New York, May 15, 2017--The Mexican prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression in Mexico should swiftly investigate the murder of Javier Valdez Cárdenas and bring all those responsible to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Valdez was shot and killed today near the offices of Ríodoce, the local weekly he founded in 2003 in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state, according to reports.

New York, May 10, 2017--The arrest of a journalist in the U.S. state of West Virginia while asking a question of Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price yesterday is an affront to press freedom, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

More than 100 journalists and media workers have been threatened, harassed, detained, injured, or otherwise obstructed from doing their work in Venezuela since mass protests erupted against the government of President Nicolás Maduro there at the beginning of April 2017, according to media reports, the affected journalists, and Venezuelan press freedom groups.

Mexico City, May 4, 2017-- Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto today pledged to prioritize combating impunity in the murders of journalists for the remainder of his term, which ends next year. He said the safety and protection of journalists would also be a priority.

Bogotá, Colombia, May 2, 2017--Venezuelan authorities should immediately release Marcos Vergara and Deivis Valera, production assistants for the online media platform VivoPlay, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The two were taken into the custody of the Venezuelan National Guard while covering a protest last night, according to their lawyer.